ITE online exams moved offline after system crashes
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Institute of Technical Education online exams from June 4 to June 11 had to be conducted using printed scripts instead.
ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
SINGAPORE – Students at all three Institute of Technical Education (ITE) colleges here taking online exams from June 4 to 11 had to do their assessments on paper instead, after the online exam system crashed.
The in-person exam sessions were scheduled from June 2 to 11, excluding weekends, and students encountered difficulties accessing the online system on campus on June 4, ITE said in a media reply. The sessions on June 2 and 3 were unaffected.
It added that all three of its colleges – East, West and Central – were affected, but did not say how many students, exams or courses were affected.
The exams that were disrupted on June 4 were rescheduled to June 11 with printed scripts, ITE said.
Exams from June 5 to 11 proceeded as scheduled, also using printed scripts, it added on June 9.
“We are working with the vendor to resolve the issue,” ITE said, but did not reveal who the vendor is.
A Reddit user, who said he was from ITE College East, said students reporting for an exam at 9am on June 4 were unable to log in to the exam system. “We waited in the exam venue for two hours straight before the invigilator told us to come back next week for the exam,” the user said.
Shannen Ooi Xun Ying, who takes a Higher Nitec course on web development and design, was among those affected on June 4.
“I was at a lab for attendance-taking when a few moments later, my form teacher announced the bad news,” she said.
The 18-year-old said the exam had been scheduled for 3pm to 4.15pm at ITE College West. In the end, the students were dismissed only after 4.50pm.
She added that she had taken online exams at ITE before and they were usually conducted using Janison Replay, on a laptop provided by the school.
Janison Replay is an online assessment platform by Janison Education Group, a tech provider based in Australia.
Janison said in an announcement on the Australian Securities Exchange on March 20, 2020, that it had completed “the development of a software solution tailored specifically for online exam assessments for the higher-education market” and the product would be used by ITE students.
When contacted, Janison referred The Straits Times’ queries on the online exam system outage to ITE.
